Networks connect electronic devices together and enable them to communicate with one another. The electronic devices may include terminal communication devices (e.g. smart phones, laptops, computers, tablets, etc.), servers, hosts (processing units such as computers, printers or other peripheral devices), controllers, switches, gateways, and other network elements. These electronic devices in the network communicate with each other through communication channels. Underlying these channels are various physical devices. Examples of the physical devices include adapters that connect various network elements to the network, a cable or a bus that connects the adapters to a port on a network hub, the network switches that provide connectivity to each network element and the cables or buses that interconnect these network switches.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,751,544 and U.S. Patent Application Publication Nos. 2003/0079034, 2005/0144505, 2006/0126654 and 2013/0185425 disclose examples of networks and network elements. ECMA International standard 269 discloses examples of methods by which different network elements may communicate with each other.
Monitoring of different network devices can occur in a network. For instance, under Computer Supported Telecommunications Applications (CSTA) standards, a computing function is often required to start individual device monitors for each device under its control. In many networks, compliance with the CSTA standards for performance of monitoring of different devices can involve significant network resources, which can add cost to the operation of the network and/or reduce the quality of network performance. For instance, in a large deployment, up to 100,000 service requests can be required to be made by a CSTA computing function and responses by a CSTA switching function to those requests may need to be processed in a serial fashion. Such a process can require pacing by the computing function and switching function in order to not overload the system with requests at the startup phase of monitoring.